


Halfway There

by Blissymbolics



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:13:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29678937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blissymbolics/pseuds/Blissymbolics
Summary: “Do you want to be buried or cremated?” Richie asks.“Cremated,” Eddie replies, no need for deliberation. “And I want you to hold on to my ashes for as long as you’re around.”Richie and Eddie return to Derry for Maggie Tozier’s funeral and contemplate what they want from the time they have left.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 8
Kudos: 73





	Halfway There

Richie’s mom always seemed to have a morbid fascination with the aftermath of her own death. She belonged to one of the oldest families in Derry, dating back to the 1830s. Richie had at least one relative from the last seven generations buried in the local cemetery, and when he was a kid, his mom told him that’s where she would be buried one day too. She always said it with a sense of pride, like she was carrying on some important tradition. Richie was still too young to even fully grasp the concept of permanent loss. People came and went, things were gone, then they appeared again. He still believed in heaven back then, and complained that it sounded really boring.

This time last year Richie was visiting her down in Florida, where she resettled after his dad died in 2008. His first night in town she took him to an open-air restaurant along the wharf, and over their meal of crab legs informed him with a cheery smile that she had picked out her headstone and reserved her burial plot up in Derry. She spent the next half hour meticulously going through the details: contact information for the funeral home, the embalming process, the best way to transport her body, and an invitation list for the ceremony.

Richie’s appetite plummeted. He very quickly tuned her out. Not out of boredom or disinterest, but simply because he was a thirty-nine year old man and had too much dignity to cry in a restaurant.

But now he’s thankful for all her planning. It left him with virtually no decisions, simply a list of instructions, like assembling a new coffee table. Eddie took care of most of it. He already had practice from when his mom died, which was a far more stressful ordeal since Mrs. K left him with no money, instructions, or friends willing to help.

But at least her death was expected. Richie’s mom’s was not. At seventy-one she was perfectly healthy. She had vacations lined up three years in advance. But then she got pneumonia, and in the span of less than a week she was gone. She called him from the hospital two days before her death and assured him it was no big deal, and he believed her. The idea of flying out to be with her didn’t even cross his mind. But that was the last time he heard her voice, and now he’ll have to carry that regret for the rest his life.

They had the funeral yesterday. His mom sold the house when she left Derry, and Richie regrets never getting a chance to say goodbye to that either. It’s still there. The new owners painted it green, and there’s a new mailbox and some out-of-season Christmas lights, but it’s still the home he remembers.

After the burial he and Eddie went back to the townhouse. They cried, ordered pizza, showered together, and split a bottle of wine. His mom decided to be buried next to his dad, which he suspects was more about appearances than preference. About a dozen of Richie’s relatives attended the ceremony, plus a number of old friends in Derry, and a few new ones who flew up from Florida. At least his mom left behind a lot of people who will miss her, and isn’t that the most any of them can hope for?

It’s a new day now, and after eating a very late breakfast Richie asked if they could go back to the cemetery for a while. After all, their plane leaves in the evening, and it may be a very long while before they have a reason to come back again.

He remembers hanging out in the cemetery all the time as a kid. Back then the headstones went up to his chest instead of his thighs. He would weave through the rows and brush his hands against the granite. He remembers the mud clinging to his sneakers and the way the leaves crunched beneath his feet. He remembers coming here with the gang, and feeling a thousand miles above the bodies beneath his feet.

It’s only been seven months since they took down the clown, which means he’s only had seven months to process an entire childhood of memories. Sometimes it’s so overwhelming it gives him headaches. On lazy depression days he and Eddie will lie in bed together and try constructing past days from sunrise to set.

_“Remember when you got put in timeout in preschool for knocking over that girl’s teepee?”_

_“I don’t think so. Do you remember when you fell off the monkey bars and split your lip?”_

_“Yeah. I needed stitches. They had to wrap me in a blanket so I wouldn’t squirm.”_

_-_

_“You remember anything about that first dance in middle school?”_

_“I remember Ryan having a meltdown because Greta broke up with him.”_

_“Didn’t they date for like three weeks?”_

_“Yeah. She wore a chain on her wrist with a padlock.”_

_“We should do that.”_

_-_

_“In sophomore year we had social studies for first period, right?”_

_“Yeah, that’s the year we had all those crazy hard tests, right? Where we had to memorize the dates of all those Revolutionary War battles.”_

_“Yeah, and we had that big final paper that no one got over a B on. What’d you write yours on?”_

_“I can’t remember.”_

_“Yes, you can. Just think. I did mine on photography during the Civil War.”_

_“Wait, I got it. I think it was… something to do with newspapers. Or printing. Something. I don’t know.”_

“It was on Benjamin Franklin’s printing press,” Richie says out of the blue.

“Hm?” Eddie turns his head.

“My final paper for sophomore social studies. I just remembered. I got a C.”

Eddie smiles, and shifts a bit closer to him on the bench. Richie stares out at the cemetery, trying to recall what it looked like when they were kids. Some of the stones around the perimeter are new, but the core is unchanged. The stones are a bit worse for wear, and the bodies certainly so, but the atmosphere is the same. Yet cemeteries feel different when you’re almost certainly over halfway through life.

“Do you want to be buried or cremated?” Richie asks.

“Cremated,” Eddie replies, no need for deliberation. “And I want you to hold on to my ashes for as long as you’re around.”

That sentence is enough to bring fresh tears to Richie’s eyes. “I think you’re going to be around a lot longer than me. All those benders are going to catch up with me eventually.”

Richie glances down at the wedding ring on his left hand. They started wearing them before Eddie even finalized his divorce, adding bigamy to his long list of transgressions. Richie thinks about the fact that he’ll probably die with the ring on his finger, and that’s enough to make him smile through the tears.

Before their reunion last year, Richie never really thought about death. It may sound bleak, but he never felt like there was much worth staying alive for. He tended to swing between neutral satisfaction and passive suicidalness, but his ideation was only ever skin-deep. Philosophy spirals were never his style. He coped by interpreting his indifference as enlightenment. He could die any day at any time and feel content. No loose strings, no lost dreams, no harm no foul. But then he found Eddie again, and now he wants to stay alive as long as he possibly can. He needs to make up for all the time they lost, and not let bitterness spoil what they have left.

Life is so much happier when you have someone to share it with. It also makes you cruelly aware of how short it is.

“What about you?” Eddie asks. “Buried or cremated?”

The tears are now freely flowing down Richie’s cheeks. He’s thought about the question before, but never with any weight. It was a party question; he’d give a passing answer then go back to eating his chips. The truth is up until recently he didn’t much care. He would be dead, so why would he care about the fate of the meat sack carrying around his brain?

But his body feels different now. It’s something that Eddie touches every day. It’s how Eddie sees him, how he’ll remember him, it’s the object in all the photographs, and it’s carrying the ring on his hand. He never treated his body with dignity, not the way Eddie does. But he’s starting to feel like it deserves more than what he’s given it.

“I think I want to be cremated too. And I want my ashes mixed with yours.” His nose is dripping and his eyes sting. Eddie reaches up to rub circles on his back.

“Yeah, good idea,” Eddie nods, then leans down to press his forehead against his shoulder. “But hey, we’ve got a lot of other shit to do first.”

Richie takes off his glasses to wipe them on his sleeve. “Yeah, I know, but… I’ve just been thinking about my mom. I mean, she had a pretty good life. Sure, her husband was a piece of shit and her son a deadbeat fuck-up, but she did better than most. And now there’s nothing left of her except for some sweaters she knitted that I never wore and some family recipes she stole from Martha Stewart. Is that really all she left?”

“She left you.”

Richie laughs, hiding the fact that he feels like he just got punched in the chest. “Yeah, forty-one year old leftovers.”

He presses his sleeve against his eyes. If he can just get it all out now, he’ll be fine. He’ll grieve, and work, and kiss Eddie every chance he gets, and dwell on what he wants to leave behind in the world. Maybe it will be nothing more than three shitty standup specials and a health nut husband who will outlive him by twenty years, but as long as he enjoyed the ride, then it should be enough.

Richie takes a deep breath. His lungs hurt like he’s been sprinting. “When I was fifteen or something my mom told me that one of the best parts of being a parent is getting to relive your own childhood while watching your kid grow up. And it makes you better. It’s something that people without kids never get. I think she might’ve been on to something.”

Richie holds his breath. It’s not a definitive statement; he can retract it later. Funerals can make you impulsive, especially when it comes to kids. They’ve only been together for seven months and married for two. There’s no rush. It would be a long process anyway. But he’s almost certain this is something he wants. Something he can share with Eddie, call their own, and one day leave behind.

Eddie squeezes his hand and nods. He says nothing, but smiles through his tears.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed. Please let me know if you liked it.


End file.
